[3]
[Decoration]

The dicta of the Wise Man concerning discipline have been the source of inexpressible dolour to children for very many centuries; and it has only been within the last sixty years that ferocity in the treatment of infants (I am speaking of English children, Jean Jacques Rousseau shamed the French out of the practice of beating their offspring, nearly a hundred years ago) has been gradually diminishing. In the eighteenth century the lot of the British juvenile was certainly a [4] cruel one That admirable woman, the mother of the Wesleys, held that a child should be made to desist from crying and to “fear the rod” at the mature age of twelve months; and Miss Maria Semple, writing on education in 1812, tells a story of a lady who was educated in early years by a relative. “On a certain day in every week she received corporal chastisement. If she had committed faults, ‘the punishment was due;’ if she had not, she probably would in the week ensuing. At the distance of more than half-a-century, the memory of this person, who bore a public character of piety and virtue, was spoken of, and justly, with aversion by the person she had thus treated.” Thus Miss Maria Semple.—“G. A. S.,” in the Illustrated London News.